and all her wanders

Ubud Markets, Bali

1 September, 2015

From Ibu Oka, there was a sign pointing to the markets so we followed it (while trying to dodge passing motorbikes in a tight laneway). We were greeted with a colourful sight and interesting souvenirs. When it comes to markets like these, I’m a little scared of being ripped off and bargaining too much (what balance?!). So here we are thinking, we will go 50% off the advertised price and work from there. We didn’t buy much but thought we did pretty well at bargaining getting things about close to 50% off, but then we were told we could’ve gotten them at 60%-70% off. Guess we don’t have those Asian lady genes!

Ubud Markets was quite a big area, in and around a building block as well as down a small road. It was good that things didn’t feel too repetitive since we managed to see ‘most of it’. As mentioned earlier, there were plenty of interesting souvenirs to chose from. The one thing that we were ‘huh?!’ about is the amount of wooden/metal/ penises on display in the form of statues, bottle openers, key rings, magnets etc. We giggled at the sight of it without a clue of what this part of the human body had to do with Bali. With a trusty Google search (just a few weeks ago), it turns out it represents a supreme god in Balinese culture and these ‘charms’ supposedly keep bad luck and sprits away. Well that’s great to know that men’s genitals are ‘good luck’….